God is a blank tablet, on which there is nothing save that which thyself hast written.
MARTIN LUTHER
It is said that only the prophets had the true vision of God, and this because they were God-inspired men. Some of them did not deal with war and conquest, but rather with man and his relation to God. Here then we should find that truer vision than, say, that of warring kings and patriarchs. Well, let us see of what it consists.
The subjugation of the Jews in Babylon has been called “The second captivity,” that in Egypt being the first. We say, however, it is the same captivity, and but the prophets’ version of the first; and both are but allegories about Life’s captivity in matter. “From the power of the nether world I will ransom them” (Hosea 13:14). Of course our translators did not know that in mythology the nether world is the material earth and so they made it “grave,” King James Version. And thus are the keys obliterated.
In the Prophet-version, this nether world is Babylon instead of Egypt. This is the same Babylon as in Revelation, namely earth, the mythic symbol of evil, corruption, materialism. But in this second version the cause of this captivity is different, and this because the prophets, so called, were priests. And to priests the cause of all trouble is sin; by this time these Hebrew epigoni had even developed a “conviction of sin,” and so sin was the cause.
4. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward (the sin syndrome of religion; Isa. Chap. 1).
The Book of Isaiah is a lead-up to this “second captivity,” and if we read it knowingly the words become strangely like those of the first.
1. The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah (Chap. 1).
17. Behold, the Lord will carry thee away with a mighty captivity, and will surely cover thee (Chap. 22).
16. In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall be afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts, which he shaketh over it.
17. And the land of Judah shall be a terror unto Egypt, every one that maketh mention thereof shall be afraid in himself, because of the counsel of the Lord of hosts, which he hath determined against it.
21. And the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, . . .
22. And the Lord shall smite Egypt . . . (Chap. 19).
15. And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod (Chap. 11).
5. And the Lord will create upon every dwelling place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night . . . (Chap. 4).
Now why all this talk about Egypt if the “second captivity” was in Babylon? And why this similarity to Exodus? Because Babylon and Egypt are one, and Isaiah is rewriting Exodus, as we are told Ezra did. His subject then is not the captivity of the Jewish people in Babylon but life’s captivity in matter, a universal event. In his preface he gives us a hint of this, and a hint to the wise should be sufficient.
11. And I will punish the world for their evil (the wicked elements that would become matter; Chap. 13).
This is the mytho-tragedy that befell our world when it was a sun. “An evil spirit from God” came upon it; its free life-force became captive in matter; a deliverer was needed, and who should appear but Joshua the Savior, alias Jeshua. That this Jeshua is Joshua is proved by Nehemiah 8:17. Here Joshua is again called “the son of Nun” and the name is spelled Jeshua. And just as Joshua read the book of the law (of life) to the Israelites after the first captivity, so Jeshua now reads it to them after the second. Thus if this “second captivity” is historical, it is strange indeed that it follows so closely a prior and purely mythical one.
In this “second” not even a Pharaoh is missing, for Pharaoh-nechoh came also. And Necho means dragon, Satan, serpent, matter. And this is brought up from Egypt, earth, to conquer Jehoahaz, one of the last kings of Judah.
33. And Pharaoh-nechoh put him in bands at Riblah in the land of Hamath (as was Samson in Timnath), that he might not reign in Jerusalem ... (2 Kings, Chap. 23).
Here follows a succession of kings from Josiah down to Jehoiachin. And only now do we come to Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon.
11. And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came against the city, and his servants did besiege it.
13. And he carried out thence all the treasure of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the Lord, as the Lord had said.
14. And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land. (Yet later they had great armies.)
15. And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king’s mother, and the king’s wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land, those carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon (Chap. 24).
And here follows one of those confusions wrought by careless editing. Verse 16 tells us of the smiths and the craftsmen and there ends this account, then verse 17 from another source continues thus:
17. And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah his father’s brother king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah.
Whose father’s brother? And in whose stead? The preceding part of this account is missing and so it would seem that Mattaniah or Zedekiah was Nebuchadnezzar’s father’s brother. The text, however, refers to Jehoiachin, Zedekiah’s nephew. Zedekiah was the last of the kings, apparently by divine decree. Having offended “the Holy One of Israel,” the latter decided to destroy him. To this end he brought Nebuchadnezzar back to besiege Jerusalem.
20. For through the anger of the Lord it came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had cast them out of his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon (2 Kings, Chap. 24).
If this be so, then Nebuchadnezzar was not to blame; he was but the instrument of this monster’s vengeance. Now if, as we were told, this holy monster ordered the building of His temple, why would He allow its destruction? And what of His promises to David and Solomon? They were revoked, we are told, because of sin. Does God cancel His decrees because of this? That promise of an everlasting kingdom was not made conditional.
6. So they took the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah; and they gave judgment upon him.
7. And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah (as with Samson), and bound him with fetters of brass (as with Samson), and carried him to Babylon (instead of Gaza) (2 Kings, Chap. 25).
This was the second capture of Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar, but another account tells of a third, this time under Nebuzaradan. Again all the silver and gold and sacred vessels are removed, and the priests and the people are carried away to Babylon. Yet “there’s plenty more where they came from,” and so we have another story. Gedaliah becomes a sort of ruler over them, and in the seventh month, of course, Ishmael, earth, and still alive, slays him and all the Jews that were with him. Thereupon the remainder flee to Egypt. Chapter 24 told us that none were left in Jerusalem “save the poorest sort,” yet chapter 25 verse 26 says: “And all the people, both small and great, and the captains of the armies, arose and came to Egypt.”
Where then are the Jews? In Babylon or in Egypt? Both, for both represent the same thing—dense matter. And so the children of Israel are again captive in earth, and thus ends the everlasting kingdom promised by their God, if this be history. A hint of its mythical nature, however, is found in a postscript to this chapter. The captives again need a deliverer, and one appears in the person of Jehoiachin, the Joseph and Moses of this story. In the thirty-seventh year of the captivity, a king with a very appropriate name, Evil-merodach (Emil Marduk), raised Jehoiachin up and set him above all the kings of the empire, as was Joseph by the Pharaoh.
Quite unknown to the credulous there are other accounts of these events besides those found in the Bible, the latter being, no doubt, those most useful to the compilers. One of these concerns Nebuzaradan. On entering the temple court he found the blood of Zechariah boiling, in anger no doubt. Unable to stop it or have it explained, he burned 80,000 young Jewish priests. Another account says these 80,000 fled and found refuge among the Ishmaelites. This reminds us of the 100,000 Syrians the Jews killed in one day and the 27,000 the wall fell on. If lay historians wrote such things, would we believe them? We accept them scripturally only because here they’re assumed to be under the imprimatur of God. From this we see the necessity of this divine accessory to the fraud.
Of this second captivity there is no more proof than of the first. Herodotus, the Greek historian, visited Babylon about the time the scriptural “return” was in process, yet makes no mention of it or the captivity. In his history of ancient Egypt there is no word about the first captivity; in fact, Herodotus never mentioned the Jews at all; nor did Homer, Plato or Socrates. Lacking any such evidence, our preconvinced apologists have searched elsewhere. Of the proofs offered, the most important are the cuneiform archives of the house of Murashu, which record commercial dealings with the Jews of Babylon. But were these exilic Jews? Are not Jews everywhere, and are they not commercialists? Then there are the Elephantine papyri, but Elephantine was in Egypt, not Babylon. At the time of these records, 408 B.C., Jerusalem was, according to the Bible, completely bankrupt, yet these records tell us these colonial Jews appealed to Jerusalem for help. Thus they belie rather than support the Bible. According to the latter the Jews were always and everywhere strong in their faith in Jehovah, yet these records tell us these Jews in Egypt worshiped Egyptian gods as well as their own—Anath-Yahu, for one. This dual name signifies “consort of Yahveh,” and this Anath is one with Asenath, Joseph’s wife. These ancient documents are no proof whatever of a historical captivity, nor would they be considered such but for the belief that the Bible itself is historical.
It is time our scholars and our clergy sought the hidden meaning of this story instead of historical proof thereof. The kingdom of Solomon is the involutionary world whose glory is the sun. Solomon, the symbol of this, created a material temple, the earth—the sun, as we said, is laying down within itself a future world. As this goes on, the free Life Principle is made captive in dense matter, and this is the Israelites’ captivity in Babylon, elsewhere called Babel, and Zerubbabel appears in this story. Here for eighty years, this time, the Israelites (elements) dream of rebuilding the glorious temple of Solomon (sun), but they build only a sorry replica of it, a dull and somber earth. No wonder the old men wept. This second temple is identical with the second “beast” of Revelation. Of the building of this, we have several accounts, and in all of them there is an adversary, an opposer. The most interesting one is Sanballat, who opposed Nehertiiah. Here our scholars are again in trouble; they have great difficulty in placing this man, for, as they say, he has no place in the political structure of his time. And they are right. Sanballat was not a man but a principle, not an opposer but the opposer, the eternal adversary of myth and scripture, namely matter—Satan, Antigone, Antiope, Antigonus, Mephistopheles, etc. Mindless, senseless matter’s only will is inertia, and any one who has ever worked with it, or tried to bend it to his will, knows well its opposive nature. At times it seems even malicious; as someone so aptly put it, “The utter depravity of inanimate things.” This too was personified.
To build this second temple the Israelites came out of Babylon, as they came out of Egypt to build the first, and the man to lead them was none other than Joshua, alias Jeshua—with Zerubbabel as his right-hand man. The cosmogonical nature of the work is clearly implied by the repeated use of the number seven.
1. And when the seventh month (cycle and plane) was come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem (the gathering of the “chosen” elements).
6. From the first day of the seventh month began they to offer burnt offerings unto the Lord. . . . (The first of the seventh month is the beginning of the seventh plane and hence a burning sun; Ezra, Chap. 3).
In this account Ezra is the builder, then later, we learn it was Nehemiah, he having secured the right from Cyrus of Persia. In the latter book, Ezra served only as scribe and priest, yet elsewhere we are told he preceded Nehemiah by fourteen years. These are not different builders but different accounts of the one builder, written, by the way, centuries after the alleged event. Yet what proof is there that Ezra ever existed? No more than for Moses or Solomon. In 200 B.C. Ben Sirach reviewed the famous men of Jewish mythology, not history, yet made no mention of Ezra. The reason should now be obvious; Ezra is also mythological. Modern scholars confirm this. In his History of the Jews, Sachar writes thus: “Parts of the account in Ezra are probably the imaginative interpretation of events by the pious chroniclers who wrote many generations later. The grandiloquent proclamation of Artaxerxes, and the account of a second general migration to Palestine, seem, at best dubious. Many modern critics even question whether Ezra is a nistorical character; they lean to the view that he is the impersonation of the Puritan tendency which dominated the middle fifth century.” 1He is said to have rewritten the books of Moses but this means only he repeated the mythological works of Moses, namely, Evolution. By its very nature the first captivity is mythological; is it possible a later historical event would parallel so closely a mythological precedent? Knowing now the purely mythical antiquity of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, etc., one might well ask, How old is the Old Testament? In The Decline of the West, Spengler has this to say: “It was in post-Exilic times that the idea arose of the Tables of the Law received by Moses on Sinai; later such an origin came to be assumed for the whole Torah, and about the Maccabean period for the bulk of the Old Testament.”
This is correct. “The bulk of the Old Testament” is but priestly montage imposed on Jhwhistic cosmology, and the reign of the priesthood was long subsequent to the events recorded. It was also pseudo-Hellenic and this carried over into the Christian era. Thus the New and the Old were not separated by long ages, as assumed; the one was but a continuation of the other.
Using a diagram we might illustrate it thus, greatly simplified, of course, because not showing the many sects, both Judaic and Christian, that flourished at that time. The date 300 is not definite either, but only illustrative. It was, however, in the fourth and third centuries B.C. that Hebrew mythology lost its symbolic meaning and became the basis for a priestly religion, and it was in the third and fourth centuries A.D. that Christian mythology lost its symbolic meaning and likewise became a priestly religion. Both began as mythology and ended in dogmatic theology.
No resume, or should we say expose, of the Bible would be complete without a word about Elijah and Elisha. But since their accounts are but more of the same, perverted cosmology, we will be brief. For future reference, however, we wish to record them. And for the liberties we take with the Bible’s sequence we make no apologies here either. In doing so we are but following the examples set by its compilers. They too have taken liberties, not only with the planetary sequence they are secretly following but even with sentences. Second Chronicles ends in the middle of a sentence, the remainder of which is found in Ezra chapter 1, verse 3. In chapter 23 of 2 Kings, verse 23 is incomplete, verse 24 dealing with something quite different. As for the original sequence, the planetary process, the entire Bible perverts and conceals it. Thus, we, following it, are but putting things misplaced by priestly cunning back in their proper place again.
Eli, as we have said, means God, and the suffix signifies life. Such is Elijah, and also Elias, and in the apocryphal Ecclesiasticus, Elijah is called Elias. These two are therefore one, the former representing Involution, the latter Evolution, “which was for to come.”
1. And it came to pass after many days (the first three planes and periods), that the word of the Lord (law) came to Elijah (as it did to Noah) in the third year (epoch), saying, Go shew thyself (spirit) unto Ahab (matter); and I will send rain upon the earth (the deluge; 1 Kings, Chap. 18).
Mythologically, Ahab is the Babylonian Adad, “the storm god” or “rainmaker,” cosmogonically, the deluge-maker.
41. And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain.
42. So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees.
43. And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.
44. And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold there ariseth a little cloud (monadic host) out of the sea (cosmic), like a man’s hand (and like the stone in the image). And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot (Ezekiel’s wheel and Noah’s ark), and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.
45. And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain (deluge). And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel (as did Noah to Ararat; 1 Kings, Chap. 18).
As this was also Elijah’s destination, “he girded up his loins, and ran before Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel,” that is, the entrance of the first material plane. And here, the queen thereof, namely Jezebel, matter, tried to kill him. Was ever a Creation myth written wherein the Creator’s life was not threatened? No, this is part of the mythic formula, implying Creation’s violence. On learning of his danger, Elijah fled for his life. And need we ask where? To the wilderness, of course. This is where all Creators flee at this point, that wilderness of the intermediate planes, and stay “forty days and forty nights.” Here Elijah sits down under a tree, that “tree of life,” and exclaims, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life (spiritual).” He was afraid of that great darkness beyond as was Abram before him. There he slept until an angel awakened him, fed him, and sent him “in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights (four planes) unto Horeb the mount of God (the earth itself).” Here he turns “eastward” (to Eden), and hides himself by the river Jordan, the involutionary “river of life.” “And the ravens brought him bread and fish in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook” (17:6).
This is indeed “divine providence,” but not original. When Jupiter was hiding in the wilderness from Cronos, Aquila, the eagle, fed him also. And such is the “divine providence” of scripture—mythological. Look not then for God’s ravens to feed you; they won’t.
And now Elijah, like Saul and David, is living in a cave, that “hole in space” called matter, earth. This is a Magian touch; in this religion the earth is spoken of as “the world cavern.” It is also the “cave” of Kundalini. From this the life force must be released and so the wholly unnecessary overlord decreed:
11. And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount (earth) before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
12. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. (And after the earth’s convulsions, the “still, small voice” of radiation.)
13. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle (freed energies), and went out (Exodus), and stood in the entering in of the cave (exit from matter). And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah? (Chap. 19).
This is the same voice Moses heard and the message was of like nature—go on and establish Evolution.
15. And the Lord said unto him, Go, return (by Evolution) on the way to the wilderness of Damascus: and when thou comest, anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. (According to 2 Kings 8:15, Hazael became king only by murdering Benhadad.)
16. And Jehu (Joshua) the son of Nimshi (Nun) shalt thou anoint to be king over Israel: and Elisha the son of Shaphat of Abelmeholah shalt thou anoint to be prophet in thy room (1 Kings, Chap. 19).
The entire Old Testament implies that the God of the universe participated in the political affairs of Israel. Can modern man believe that? Well, he believes in what follows.
8. And Elijah took his mantle, and wrapped it together, and smote the waters, and they were divided hither and thither, so that they two went over on dry ground (the crossing of the Red Sea and the Jordan).
11. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven (2 Kings, Chap. 2).
This is but the ascension of life from matter in Evolution, yet some five hundred million credulous Christians and Jews believe it literally, or did. They even painted pictures of this holy man going up to God in a material chariot. They should read other races’ mythology, then they would understand their own. Romulus, who founded Rome, the earth, was also taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. And Mithra of Persia was similarly translated. So with the story of Elijah bringing down fire from heaven upon the priests of Baal and their sacrifice. Prometheus also brought fire down from heaven. This we say is a myth but Elijah’s story is “the word of God.” Do you not see how the art of “sacred literature” has deceived us? In both cases the fire is but the fire of life, brought down in Involution and carried up again in Evolution. Why then is one profane myth and the other “sacred literature”? The tragedy of the Piscean Age lies in our ignorance of the former and our faith in the latter.
While he lived, this God of fire destroyed besides all the priests of Baal, two companies of fifty innocent messengers sent him by King Ahaziah. Addressed as “thou man of God,” he answered them thus: “If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume him and his fifty” (2 Kings 1:10). And again some five hundred million of us believe this Elijah was a just and holy man. Not even John Neanderthal would be so monstrously cruel as Elijah—or so credulous as we. We can’t even see what “a man of God” is like, or draw the conclusion that God is like his man. To Satan we attribute every cruelty, crime and evil, but nowhere do we find a Satan as satanic as the God of the Old Testament. Where then is its God of love and mercy? We have examined some ten or twelve of its books and nowhere have we found a trace of him. The reason is because he exists only where there is ignorance of Reality.
All down the ages man has been telling man what kind of a God, God is, and yet with all his endless theories no word has come from that vast silence to tell him which is right. To me that silence has a meaning, and that meaning is just this—there’s nothing there to answer. All that could or would answer is man-made and evolutionary.
Elisha is the evolutionary aspect of the involutionary Elijah; he is therefore one with Moses and Joshua, and as such repeats their miracles.
14. And he took the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and smote the waters, and said, Where is the Lord God of Elijah? and when he also had smitten the waters, they parted hither and thither: and Elisha went over (2 Kings, Chap. 2).
Only the spiritually blind can believe this literally; only the metaphysically ignorant can miss its cosmological meaning.
23. And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and ate forty and two children of them (Chap. 2).
What tolerant people these men of God were! Yet what would you expect if they were men of God? The Jews are proud of being the “chosen” of this God, but little do they realize its occult implication. As for the epithet: the bald-headed Elisha was but the bald-headed earth, still naked and bare like Adam and Noah, and biologically wanting like Belshazzar. The children’s voices crying, “Go up, thou bald head,” are the same voices Elijah heard saying, “What doest thou here, Elijah?”—the planetary urge to rise and create. In an Oriental book a thousand years older than the Bible, the bare, primeval earth is called “bald head,” and in Mexico a sacred hill where their God was crucified bears the same name. Later we will come to another— Calvary.
Chapter 4 tells us about Elisha miraculously filling the poor woman’s vessel with oil, as Elijah had filled another’s barrel with meal; also of his feeding a hundred men with a few loaves of barley. Thus Christ was not the first to multiply food for the hungry, nor yet to raise the dead. Both Elijah and Elisha did that. A Shunammite woman had befriended Elisha, and when her child fell sick she sent for this man who had just killed forty-two children. Is there no one in all Christendumb sufficiently enlightened to see the meaning of these contradictions? No, not in two thousand years, and the reason was given in our Preface—the metaphysical incompetency of Western man. His borrowed Bible is just too subtle for his blunted mind to understand. Of its contents he comprehends only the literal word, and so, like a child reading a fairy tale, he believes this scriptural infanticide was at the same time so divine he could bring the dead to life even after he himself was dead.
20. And Elisha died, and they buried him. . . .
21. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet (Chap. 13).
And Western man believes that. Here again he cannot see that this is but the work of the genetic palmed off on him as that of the epigenetic. Elisha is the genetic principle, and its task is to raise biologic life from “dead matter.” And such are all scriptural raisings of the dead.
Before Elisha died he carried out Elijah’s command to anoint Jehu king of Israel. And so we have another anointed trinity—Elijah, Elisha, and Jehu. And what a strange way these people had of ordaining their leader. In this case a young man was chosen to carry a box of oil to Jehu’s quarters, and, by hook or by crook, pour it on him and run. This he finally accomplished, then “opened the door and fled.”
11. Then Jehu came forth to the servants of his lord: and one said unto him, Is all well? wherefore came this mad fellow to thee? . . . (Chap. 9).
And now having been appointed by God and anointed by Elisha, Jehu sets out on a campaign of extermination. By subtlety, trickery, and atrocity, he destroys Ahab’s seventy children (septenate elements) and all the priests of Baal (matter), in spite of the fact that Elijah had destroyed them all before him. For these monstrous acts Jehu’s monstrous God rewards him as usual.
30. And the Lord said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes, and hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel (Chap. 10).
And this is the God to whom we pray for peace and justice, love and mercy. Little wonder they are so scarce. What is “right” in the eyes of this God is the very opposite of the “right” of moral man; therefore man must recognize this and become his own moral authority.
Made ignorant by two thousand years of priestly falsehoods, modern man does not know that it is this same ruthless force within himself that drives him to war and death while his own self-created morality cries out against the atrocities this power compels him to commit. He does not know that it is this God-power within himself that underlies his ruthless commercial competition and its offspring, gangsterism—the little man’s way of using the big man’s method. Then there is “juvenile delinquency”; but this same impelling force without parental wisdom to guide it.
In all that has been said and written about the latter, I have never yet seen or heard the real cause mentioned. Home and parents are blamed, and rightly so, but what made home and parents what they are? The cause of delinquency both juvenile and adult is our way of doing business. It is in our daily activities, thoughts and interests that character is made. Thus the molder of minds and morals today is the market place, and until this is realized all the precepts of home and heaven are but wasted effort. Modern business is a postgraduate course in crookedness, dishonesty and deception, and it has destroyed the moral content in human nature. Even the would-be honest ones must lie and steal to meet the high cost of living it has created. Not for nothing did the Greeks make their god of commerce (Hermes) also the patron of thieves. And not for nothing did Hosea brand the merchant with deceit. “He is a merchant, the balances of deceit are in his hands; he loveth to oppress” (12:7). You see he was known of old, and every cycle he dominates is an age of crime and corruption. Little wonder modern youth is rebelling against such a system and society. As for their opposition to war, it is the most hopeful sign in this century. Only when young men the world over refuse to die because old men can’t think, will there be peace.
1 Abram Leon Sachar, A History of the Jews, second edition, p. 88.